Succor
by Fairy of the Friz
Summary: Rin Nohara lost her best friend, and threw herself into training with a new master. She would save herself - she was a woman forged in war, born of blood and loss and hardship, and she would rebuild herself. She is the student of Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina, and she WILL surpass them, and Tsunade-hime, both.


**This took me three weeks to hash out, and is an attempt at getting this plot bunny out of my head, and getting over my stupid writer's block. I might expand upon it? Please let me know your thoughts**

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 _[succor / ˈsəkər/ , assistance and support in times of hardship and distress._

For as long as she lives, Nohara Rin will never forget the sound of shifting rock and raging earth. In the early days, those first few horrible weeks after Obito... after, she could not stand the sight of Dōton techniques. She struggles with enclosed spaces. She is terrified of cave ins.

But most of all? She is terrified of being useless.

Obito is gone. Sensei is busy. It's just her and Kakashi, and, occasionally, her and Kakashi and Gai. So she trains; in the hospital, in the medic field tents, with her father and remaining brother - but they are not enough. She goes to Kushina-san, who is on Jinchuuriki House Arrest (much to the redhead's disgust).

She learns more sealing in one week than Sensei had ever shown them in almost-five years, and – and Rin is _good_ _at it_. She _likes_ it. Kushina-san becomes Kushina-shishou, and they're still at war, but life is as good as it can get.

And then they go to Kiri; a simple courier mission gone drastically, horribly wrong.

Rin knows what they've done, what they've sealed inside of her belly. She can feel the Turtle screaming, knows the rage and pain that ripples outwards and onwards through her psyche. So, she fixes it. Shishou was a big believer in the improbable – she was from Uzushio – and the impossible – she was an _Uzumaki_ – and so had prepared Rin for any occasion, not always teaching the elements in the next seal Rin had to unravel. Rin was familiar with racing against the odds and stupid, swirling ink, deconstructing each single brushstroke for clues to her knowledge gaps.

 **Kinkoju no Fuda** was designed so that she could not remove it herself, or take her own life. It was programmed to get her back to Konoha and release the Sanbi, to keep her as quiet about her circumstances as it could. The thing was, Rin had been training with Konoha's Red Hotblooded Habanero for months – she knew how to think outside the box.

"Kakashi-kun! Gimme!"

The moment she was rescued, she put her plan into action. Stealing one of Kakashi's kunai, she scratched the stabilising seal into her stomach over the ink, sealing the Sanbi into her soul properly, converting its chakra into her own. She was going to need every scrap of power she could get, and Kakashi's panicking wasn't helping. But that was ok, Kushina-shishou liked to yell and scream at her as she worked too, which had helped her to narrow her focus and block out all surrounding sounds.

Kakashi tried to snatch the kunai from her, but she bared her teeth in a parody of a smile, said, I'm not finished! She knew how this would play out: Kiri had to make this believable.

With her seal finished and the pain and despair of the pacifist bijuu locked up firmly in the very back of her head, Rin regaled Kakashi with her plan as she raced him back to Konoha.

"I am not going to kill you!" Kakashi hissed.

"And you won't!" She reassured. "I fixed the seal so all that chakra will be regulated straight into my heart, which is what you need to hit, Kakashi-kun, do you understand me?"

He might be a Jounin, but _she_ was the medic. He would bend before she would, in this.

It was at that point that the Hunter-nin caught up to them, and the battle began. Rin usually preferred chakra blades in a fight, but for this to work, she would need every scrap of chakra, so, kunai it was. They thinned the numbers, Kakashi with his **chidori** and she with her kunai and homemade explosion tags, and when there were only a handful left, Rin made her move.

She jumped in front of Kakashi's latest opponent; **chidori** went straight through her chest and into the enemy's, exactly as she'd planned. The Kiri-nin died with a gurgle. Rin smiled, said thank you as the Sanbi's chakra raced through her system, flushing the curse seal out of her heart and healing it in the process, power curling through her chakra coils. Flesh knit itself back together even as she fell backwards, brown eyes locked on horrified grey.

Rin would never be weak again.

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 **Translations:**

 **Kinkoju no Fuda** – **Forbidden Individual Curse Tag**

 **Shishou - master**


End file.
